Americana Week Wrap Up: Highlights from the Christie's Sale

As classes begin and my students are working again at the Winter Antiques Show it seemed like a good time to reflect upon what for me were the highlights of Americana week.  Christie's (where our alum Andrew Holter is head of the American Furniture dept.) had a particularly strong sale, and among the highlights were a stunning Townsend desk, an intact example of the earliest American-made porcelain, and an iconic piece of New Hampshire furniture.  The early part of the auction was a bit slow, with Audubon prints hitting at or near their estimates and a few lots that passed.  Followed by a selection of samplers, the early lots seemed designed for predictable sales with few fireworks--nice lots to be sure but not the cream of the crop.

The mood changed quickly with Edward Hicks' Penn's Treaty (estimated at $600-900K) that finally sold for $2.2 million.  The bidding was a bit erratic, with the final price appearing to reach 2.4 million amongst some confusion in the sale room.  Auctioneer John Hays quickly got control of the situation and backed the bids down to $2 million where bidding resumed.  Another surprise was lot 108
Frederick Kemmelmeyer's portrait of Washington which--after a flurry of early bidding--finally hammered for $300K, or 15 times its low estimate.  An exceptional Queen Anne chair attributed to John Haines finally hammered for $450K, a new record for furniture from New Hampshire.  The scrolled, carved arms, Spanish feet, and boldly turned stretchers, the chair is an iconic piece of New Hampshire furniture, one about which Albert Sacks remarked in 1950 "No price is too great for a chair of this quality."  Bidders seemed to agree, pushing the chair well beyond its $200-300K estimate.

In terms of furniture, the real star of the show was Lot 158, a remarkable Townsend desk that appears to have been twice signed: once by Jonathan Townsend and once by John Townsend.  Similar to a desk at the Metropolitan Museum (but retaining an older, less restored surface) Holter and Hays discovered that the top of the two desks have nearly identical grain, suggesting they were cut from the same timber.  Like all Townsend desks of this period, the lower portion of the feet were restored; this suggests that the feet on his desks were inherently weak and that the delicacy he achieved was at the expense of structural integrity.   The rarity of form, the two signatures, original brasses, and fine finish on the desk pushed it well above its $700-900K estimate (Hays began the bidding at $500K) to finally hammer at $1.9 million.

The American Soft Paste Porcelain bowl by John Bartlam was a delight to see.  Although in the catalog the form seems monumental, there is a delicacy and intimacy to the bowl (it's only 1 5/8 inches tall) that was surprising in person.  Bartlam was the first porcelain producer known in the Colonies, beginning in Cain Hoy, South Carolina about 1763 before relocating to Charleston about 1770.  A Staffordshire trained ceramist, little but Bartlam's basic biography is presently known and knowledge of his work comes mainly from patterns found in the archaeological evidence of his kilns.  Interestingly, all of the known examples have surfaced in England, suggesting that he must have brought some stock back with him when he returned in 1773.  Estimated at $30-50K, the small bowl finally hammered at $120K.

Call for Papers: Emerging Scholars Symposium

The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms and the American Fine and Decorative Arts Program at Sotheby’s Institute of Art seek submissions for the Third Annual Conference for Emerging Scholars to be held in October 2013:

 “Integrating Art and Life: Idealism, economics, and the Arts and Crafts Movement”

Writing in the March 1902 issue of Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman magazine, A. M. Simpson told readers: “Unless the production of the necessities of life can be made beautiful, pleasurable and instructive, our whole society must remain disorganized, disintegrated, and productive of pain, and inartistic… What is needed at the present time is a process of synthesis and correlation.”  This aspect of modern life that the Arts and Crafts movement sought to correct—the tension between economic viability and a satisfied, artistic life—remained a constant concern for producers throughout the period.  This conference seeks papers that explore the different aspects of this issue, including (but not limited to) whether producers were able to meet these lofty goals?  Were these goals shared by everyone?  How did the movement’s aesthetics shape perception about these products and the ideas behind them?

We invite current graduate students and recently graduated scholars to submit papers that critically examine this issue.  Please direct any questions to:

Jonathan Clancy

Director, American Fine and Decorative Arts Program

Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York

jonathan.clancy@sia.edu 

Update: Teaching the MA in American Fine and Decorative Arts Program

Let me first start with an admission: the blog, like many in the teaching world, likes to take its summers off to travel a bit, do some research, and plan for the academic year.  After some time in London, Tampa, and a trip to Cape Cod, however, the blog is back and has been quietly observing the travels of the new class as the first semester of study at Sotheby's Institute of Art unfolds.  

One bit of encouraging news is that we are on track to finish the Catalog of Paintings in the Redwood Library Collection by the end of this school year.  I am particularly grateful to have a cadre of students committed to the project and willing to donate extra time to help see its completion through.  My goal is to make this collection and the research undertaken on it accessible in as many platforms as possible; I will keep posting updates as needed in this regard.  At present, we have completed all of the artist biographies and are working our way through the editing process and finishing research on the paintings.  I remain committed to the idea that graduate programs should use the efforts of teachers and students to perform services that broaden knowledge, increase exposure, and perform a public service.  

While we have traveled quite a bit throughout this semester already, yet some (perhaps most) of it has been without a camera.  This makes for a great learning experience for the students, but not necessarily the most engaging blog posts.  It's a much different model of teaching and learning than I was exposed to during undergraduate and graduate school, however, and this distinction is worth noting.  My days at Rutgers and CUNY were essentially spent in darkened rooms, illuminated only by slides, with little exposure to the physicality of objects, whether in the context of museums, auction houses, or private collections.  While there are many advantages to a slide lecture--the ability to reach across collections and make connections, for instance--we did little to confront objects in their natural habitat.  Slides, I have come to realize, have their use but also their limits.  Once the scale of objects is lost, as inevitably it is in slides, one loses the connection to the object itself and becomes, in some ways, a disinterested observer, picking through the information the object yields and yet blind to the reality of the object, unaware (even unable) to understand it as a presence, a palpable entity that moves the viewer intellectually, emotionally, and even physically.  I cannot imagine a day where I give up slide lectures, but I am also grateful to be in New York City and to travel so that my students can experience objects first-hand, to see how condition, context, and the object itself help to create and deliver meaning.  In addition to our regular coursework we travel on three regional trips a semester, and when we are not away I make it a point to get them out each Friday to view something.  

Our first big trip of the semester was Boston and Salem.  The students are incredibly fortunate to have Gerald W. R. Ward, Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture teaching the decorative arts component this fall, and he has done an exceptional job preparing them for the collections we saw throughout the trip.  In the course of 2 1/2 days I took them to Trinity Church, The Boston Public Library, The Gardner Museum,  Harrison Grey Otis House, the Peabody Essex Museum, and Vose Galleries.  The highlight of the trip for me was a tour of the MFA in Boston where Gerry Ward led them through the collections, talked about the collections, and connected the materials they saw in class to larger issues of interpretation and installation.  

We are also fortunate to be in NYC, and I think this provides students with an access to materials and objects that is unparalleled.  Highlights of our Friday field study trips this year have taken them (or will take them) to: the NYHS to see the narrative painting exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum American Wing, the Brooklyn Museum's American Wing, the Merchant's House museum, the Yale furniture Study center, Ralph Harvard (for historic interiors and a lesson on Southern architecture and furniture), Christie's (for a preview of the September sale with alum and department head Andrew Holter), Doyle's Auction house for a collection visit with alum Peter Costanza, and the City Hall Portrait Collection. We also are looking forward to a number of visits to Sotheby's and the expertise of our colleagues there.  

These trips are undoubtedly enjoyable, and I am fortunate to find myself in a position that allows me to take students around and expose them to new places, people, and objects.  That being said, I am aware of the potential that posts like this have to be viewed merely as objects for shameless self-promotion, and certainly on some level they are: I am tasked with running a program and sustaining its viability through enrollment.  Yet, I also think that models of pedagogy are an important thing to share, to explore, to develop and that a blog entry like this can further that discussion and collaboration.  I remain committed to the primacy of the object and to creating a learning environment that stresses academic rigor and practical exposure to materials, objects, and interpretations.  I think that as the marketplace for objects continues to grow that we should seek new ways, as Americanists and art historians, to train the next generations to identify, interpret, and make relevant to new audiences the material we all hold dear.

New Research on Onondaga Metal Shops

Of all the Arts and Crafts movement enterprises, Onondaga Metal Shops remains among the least well understood. Onondaga Metal Shops was a short-lived company organized in 1905 by Edward C. Howe and located at “to manufacture art metal goods consisting of hand hammered copper and brass lamps, trays, smoking sets, advertising signs and the like.”  Howe, the son of a Syracuse jeweler, had worked with his father up until late 1905 when he formed Onondaga Metal Shops.  Located at 581 South Clinton Street, the firm advertised for metal workers, specifically seeking Germans, as late March 1906, but despite the appearance of growth, the company was likely never a viable operation.  Unfortunately for the business, as the Syracuse Journal reported in July 1906, “It was said that Edward was inclined to follow the fast side of life socially, and it had come to the ears of the family that he had been paying attention to a certain woman whose name was unknown to them.”  He left Syracuse on July 16, abandoning his wife and leaving her essentially destitute, and walked away from a company with many bills and little in the way of assets.  On July 29, 1906, the Syracuse Journal reported that a petition of involuntary bankruptcy was filed in the United States court against Howe and noted that Thomas A. Mars–superintendent of the shop–was appointed receiver of the business.   At that time, it was estimated that the company’s debts were about $12,000, or roughly twice the estimate of the value of the company’s stock and accounts.   

The Onondaga Metal Shops never lasted long enough to produce any catalogs, nor do they appear to have advertised their wares.  While in Bankruptcy, the company was purchased in September 1906 by Henry Benedict and moved from Syracuse to East Syracuse where it became associated with the M. S. Benedict Manufacturing Company, a firm primarily known for their silver plated wares.  Known as “Benedict Art Studios,” this reworked version of the Onondaga Metal Shops began advertising shortly thereafter, but continued to stress the connection between to Benedict Manufacturing Company.  At first, Benedict Art Studios appears to have been housed in a separate factory, but by April 1907 the company announced plans to enlarge their building in East Syracuse–essentially doubling their floor space–in order to allow for increased production of their flatware and other products.  As the journal Fabrics, Fancy Goods, and Notions informed their readers: “With the completion of the addition the company will be in a position to very materially increase their output and with the recent acquisition of the Onondaga Metal Shops, now known as the Benedict Art Studio, for the making of art goods in hand-wrought copper, brass and iron, they will be in a position to serve the fancy goods trade in first-class shape and in greater quantity than ever before.”  It is likely that at this time the concern’s entire facilities were merged and though the name “Benedict Art Studios” continued to be used for the next several years, there was no longer a separate facility for production. For instance, in 1911 when the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company mapped East Syracuse, they made a thorough survey of the factory but no mention of a separate facility for the production of Arts and Crafts metal.

The M. S. Benedict Company’s facilities occupied virtually all of the land on a triangular plot which was bounded by Highland Avenue, West Manlius Street, and West Yates Street.  The factory was located about one block away from the railroad line which ran through the center of town.  The company’s space was comprised of a number of buildings which included storage areas, facilities for “Casting and Metal Mixing,” office space, and a separate building labeled “Empire Dep’t.”  It would appear that rather than being operated as an independent aspect of the larger company that the designation “Benedict Art Studios” was more akin to a line of wares produced by Benedict Mfg. Co.  The relative paucity of known examples of the work seems to indicate a very limited operation.  Extant advertisements and notices only use the designation through 1911, though the production of hammered copper wares continued under Benedict Manufacturing Co., until at least 1912.

        Aesthetically, the Onondaga Metal Shop’s work followed is indebted to forms produced by Stickley and examples of British metal work including examples of pieces from Art Fittings Limited.  For at least two examples of work—a humidor and a wall plaque—the designs were directly copied from Stickley’s examples.  As a result of the direct use of designs and the close proximity of the shop to Stickley’s operation, it seems likely that a worker with knowledge of these objects must have been a link between the two factories, though in the absence of an employee roster at this period this remains a matter of conjecture.

Bibliography and sources:

The best available research on the firm has been undertaken by David D. Rudd of Dalton’s Antiques who authored the article “Wrought in Syracuse: Onondaga Metal Shops and Benedict Art Studios,” available online at http://www.daltons.com/mag2.html.  

“Metal Shops Bought by Benedict Company,” The Post Standard [Syracuse], September 25, 1906.  

The firm’s first advertisements for workers appear in various issues of The Syracuse Journal in December 1905.  These advertisements also confirm the firm’s address.

“Howe Skips Leaving His Wife Behind,” Syracuse Journal, July 28, 1906.  The following day, a rival  paper described the woman as “an attractive young North side widow.”  See “Howe is Bankrupt,” Syracuse Herald, July 29, 1906. 

“Howe is Bankrupt,” Syracuse Herald, July 29, 1906.  Later reports listed the receiver as Charles G. Baldwin.  See “Metal Shops Bought by Benedict Company,” The Post Standard [Syracuse], September 25, 1906.  Howe also applied for bankruptcy in 1909 in order to prevent him from paying back about $10,000 owed to his father.  See “In Voluntary Bankruptcy,” Syracuse Herald, March 19, 1909.

Fabrics, Fancy Goods, and Notions 40 (November 1906): 35.

“Increasing Their Facilities,” Fabrics, Fancy Goods, and Notions 40 (November 1906): 48 notes “The Benedict Mfg. Co., of East Syracuse N. Y., have taken over the entire plant of the Onondaga Metal Shops, and have moved the machinery to East Syracuse, building a special factory to accommodate the same, which will be known as Benedict Art Studio.  It seems likely that this was a separate facility on the company’s grounds since no additional addresses or listings have been located. 

“To Enlarge Plant,” Fabrics, Fancy Goods, and Notions 41 (April 1907): 32-3.

“At Pittsburgh,” Crockery and Glass Journal 74 (September 21, 1911): 20 noted: “a new electric portable display... which is attracting considerable attention.  It is made by the Benedict Art Studio Co., of East Syracuse, N. Y.”  By May 1912, hammered copper wares do not appear to have used the “Benedict Art Studios” name any longer, see “Exhibition of Fancy Goods at the Palmer House, Chicago,” Fabrics, Fancy Goods, and Notions 46 (May 1912): 51 for hammered copper wares being displayed under the Benedict Manufacturing Co. name.  

New Publications, A New Hire, and Some Student Thesis Topics

I'm pleased to announce that my article entitled "Gustav Stickley's Metal Shop: Reform, Design, and the Business of Craft," appears in the latest issue of Oxford University Press's Journal of Design History.  You can access the issue here.  For those more interested in flat art, I have also have an article on Copley's Watson and the Shark which appears in the latest issue of American Art.


It also gives me great pleasure to announce that Gerald W. R. Ward, the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston will be teaching the decorative arts component in the American Fine and Decorative Arts Program curriculum at Sotheby's Institute of Art, New York this fall.  Ward's work as a curator, scholar, and editor will form an invaluable asset to our students and the program.  


Lastly, our students have begun the thesis writing process and I thought I would share some of the outstanding topics they are working on:


Bianca Molta, "Not Just Figureheads: The Influence of Women on the Arts Made Aboard 19^th Century New England Whaling Ships"


Anna Henger, "American Odyssey: Frederic Edwin Church and Sanford Robinson Gifford in Greece"


Melody Cleven, "Rockwell Kent’s ‘realization of the brotherly union of men:’ Interpretative Illustrations for Moby Dick"


Corinne Plumhoff, "Modern
 American
 Luxury:
 The
 Reception 
of 
High
 French 
Style 
in 
the
 United
States
 from 
1925‐1939
"


Other topics include the drawings of James Edward Deeds (outsider art), the career of Tommy Parzinger, the drawings of Dale Chihuly and their relationship to Abstract Expressionsim, Calder's Circus, the reception of the Power's Greek Slave, and Islamic design influence on the Arts and Crafts.  

 

Strong Spring for American Arts and Crafts

Recent sales show surprising strength in a number of sectors of the market for American Arts and Crafts and suggest that the fall out of the most recent financial crisis may well be past.  Not surprisingly, the high end market has continued to remain strong (the 1% have continued to set record prices in virtually all markets).  The general strength of the middle market (a better barometer for the health of the market in general) seems to be increasing as well.

The sale this weekend at Rago Arts and Center demonstrated strength across all sectors of the Arts and Crafts (and some modernism) with over 88 percent of all lots selling.  The weakest sector at the moment (whether through lack of desire in general, or pricing pressure) appears to be mid century ceramics.  The work of Gertrud and Otto Natzler, for instance, sold poorly with 5 of the 6 lots offered not selling.  There seems to be a general downward pressure of the market for the Natzlers with a number of recent lots not selling or hitting pre-sale estimates.  

When exceptional pieces do turn up, however, the prices have remained strong.   


Arts and Crafts ceramics did very well at the sale, with a number of pieces far exceeding their pre-sale estimates.  Of particular note was the sale's first lot: an early and rare center bowl by Paul Revere Pottery's Saturday Evening Girls which sold for $75,000 (set. 17,500-22,500). 

Decorated by Frances Rocchi in 1909, the large size and crisp decoration of the piece obviously convinced collectors to bid.  Created using the traditional technique known as cuerda secca, the glazes on the piece are kept separate by a line of black wax resist that is painted on or filled into an incised space.  During the firing process, the wax burns off leaving the pigment behind and creating the distinct fields of color evident in the example above.


A few lots later (17 to be precise), the exuberance of this sale seemed like a distant memory as a vase executed by Frederick Hurten Rhead and Agnes Rhead at University City sold for $120,000 (well beyond its 10-15K estimate).  

Rhead's work has sold strongly in the past (notably at Rago's where a vase dating ca. 1914-17 sold to the Two Red Roses Foundation for $430,000 + commission in March 2007) but his smaller pieces like this have tended to be priced much more modestly, as the estimate indicated.  University City was a short lived venture–lasting from 1909-11–that brought together some of the most important figures in ceramics including Rhead, Taxile Doat, and Adelaide Alsop Robineau.  The english born ceramist is among the most influential designers of the first half of the 20th century (working at a number of companies including Vance-Avon, Weller, Jervis, Arequipa, and eventually Homer Laughlin) but is remarkably unknown outside of design circles.  The achievement for which he is best remembered is Fiesta Ware.  


Other highlights of the sale included a Jazz Bowl by Viktor Schreckengost that, despite some minor work, hammered in at a respectable 80K; an important set of doors made by Philadelphia craftsman Samuel Yellin; and an exceptional vase by the Martin Brothers firm of England.


This spring also saw a remarkable collection of Gustav Stickley's early furniture (brought to market for the first time) that John L. Jerome purchased for his home "La Hacienda" in 1902.  The sale at Treadway gallery in May was one of the few places to see Stickley furniture in the bright green color which was often favored by clients.  Although we tend to think of Arts and Crafts as brown and blocky, Stickley and others often dyed their work with vivid colors.  Unfortunately, these anodyne dyes have proved to be extremely fragile when exposed to UV light and as a result, the traces that remain are often seen only in the insides of drawers and cabinets.  The collection was remarkable not only for the early examples it contained, but for the condition the pieces remained in.  Not surprisingly, even examples of forms that were fairly common achieved exceptional prices.


During my May trip to Chicago with my MA students we had a chance to preview the sale and examine the pieces first hand.  Among the most impressive objects we saw was a Chalet desk, a fairly pedestrian thing for the most part which typically sells in the 2,000 to 3,000 dollar range.  The example in this sale however was bright green, largely as a result of remaining in a second floor room for the past 110 years and had its original leather surface and basket, which is fairly rare.  

It's useful to keep in mind that the depth of color evident on the front is somewhat muted, since the desk was placed against a wall and the front would have been exposed to UV light which damages the dye for more than a century.  A vies of the back of the desk gives a much better sense of how much color Stickley's furniture added to the interior.

Another remarkable piece that retained an original leather top was a 1901 library table that was finally hammered in at $325,000 (well beyond its 40-60K estimate).  Among the rarest of forms, the 1901 furniture is notable for reversed tapering legs, thick slabs of oak, and exquisitely handled mortise and tenon joinery.  Apparently too expensive and time-consuming to make, these design features were abandoned within a year as Stickley moved towards less labor intensive construction, a trend that would continue to accelerate throughout his career.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Arts and Crafts market continues to thrive despite a lack of attention paid to it throughout the year by the larger auction houses.  Sotheby's Important 20th Century sale was basically devoid of Arts and Crafts (just 5 lots out of 126).  In recent sales, Sotheby's has been moving towards the mid century and contemporary market with these sales, but even this strategy is not without a certain amount of risk.  As the recent sale showed, the market for George Nakashima's work remains somewhat finicky and even important pieces if not priced to sell, will fail to attract the interest of buyers. 

Martin Johnson Heade and Edward Hicks: A New Discovery

Among the many gaps in the chronology of Martin Johnson Heade’s life and career, his training and early work are particularly poorly documented.  A constant theme, however, in the scholarship on Heade has been his association with Edward Hicks, the Quaker preacher and painter, whose role has been suggested, yet never clearly defined.  Theodore Stebbins, for instance, in his The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade: A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 2-3 noted that although 19^th century sources were insistent upon the association, there was no external evidence to corroborate these assertions.  The question remains: what, if anything, did Heade learn from Hicks and how did this shape his work.

Scholars since Robert McIntyre have generally accepted this story, owing in part to Heade’s relationship with Thomas Hicks, evident in the portrait of Heade that Thomas Hicks painted in the 1840s.  While their acquaintance is made clear, the issue of Edward Hicks’s influence on the young Heade remains opaque.  Heade’s earliest documented paintings are portraits, a genre that Hicks largely avoided.  While some have tried to link Heade’s early style to Hicks’ teaching—emphasizing its flattened, primitive qualities of paint handling—there are no obvious signs that one can point to.  Whether Heade’s early work is the result of his training, or instead a common feature of amateur artists as they progress (here I think of Copley’s earliest work, or even that of Stuart and West) is a question that remains unanswered and rarely asked. 

A recently discovered source, however, strengthens Heade’s association with Hicks and sheds new light on the artist’s career in the early 1840s.  As reported by The Hunterdon Gazette on April 6, 1842, Heade’s early career involved sign painting as well as portraiture:

The Lambertville Cadets were presented, on Saturday afternoon, March 26th, with a beautiful Flag, by the Ladies of their village. On one side of the Flag is painted the Arms of New Jersey, on the other side the National Arms. The execution of these devices is such as to answer the expectations raised by the known skill and taste of the artist, Mr. Martin J. Heed.

…

This flag has been prepared expressly for this occasion, and while it reflects great credit upon the artist, it will at the same time be still greater credit to you who bear it, on account of the source from whence it came.

The flag has not been located, but its commission forms the strongest corroboration of the link between Hicks (painting carriages and signs) and Heade since it is the only known mention of the latter’s work outside of easel painting.  It demonstrates as well that while Heade was struggling to gain a name for himself as a portrait painter—he exhibited as early as 1841 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts—he was also taking commissions typical of rural and itinerant portraitists of the time.  Perhaps in time, when more of these types of commissions come to light, a broader understanding of Heade’s early career will emerge.

Jonathan Clancy